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Friday, 22 June 2018

Creating a perfect life for Instagram?

I've recently ventured into the world of Instagram stories. I'm loving watching them, and learning how to put together my own creative stories. I'm not one for talking directly to camera, so mine are snapshots of things that I've been up to and things that I've seen, generally accompanied by a few lines of text. I also love embellishing them with little graphics, pointy arrows and so on. If you want to check them out you can find me here - Jennifer Jain on Instagram. I've even made little buttons for highlighted categories!

However, as I take my Instagram photos and set up my stories, I am very conscious of the fact that most of the time, as well as selecting what is on display I'm also choosing what to leave out. I might take a close up of a bowl of homegrown strawberries on the table, cropping out the mess on the counters behind. I take a carefully composed shot of my legs propped up in the sunshine with no wobbly bits on display, and my pictures of our vegetable patch certainly don't highlight the weeds.

So although my Instagram shots are showing off my daily life, in truth it's not as honest as it might appear. I might not spend nearly as long curating my Instagram feed as other bloggers do, but I'm definitely thinking carefully about what I'm sharing. I usually post one photograph per day and it's showing a highlight - like a fun family moment shared around the firepit, not a family moment spent shouting at the children to get dressed and brush their teeth!

A post shared by jenniferjain (@jenniferjain) on Jun 9, 2018 at 12:24pm PDT

But the truth is that I don't want to be sharing photos of the messy or miserable parts of life. I think that as long as you understand that people are only sharing their best moments on line - whether it's Instagram, or Facebook, or on their blog - people want to see happy photos. And I'll be honest, occasionally the prospect of sharing something on Instagram will get me to go and and do something different - to go for a wander by the beach, to pick up a craft project, or to spend a bit of extra time decorating a cake. And that's not a bad thing!